Brit Hume to Tiger Woods: Dump Buddhism and find Jesus

Hume’s advice was delivered on his Fox News program. It is a striking event on several levels, particularly as Fox is trying to convince everybody that it is a bonafide news organization. I may have something to say about it later.

Any advice that I would have for Tiger Woods, Britt Hume, or any person in general is; Don’t lean on religion, of any sort, for finding truth. Depend on your own character and common decency for guidance. If you know what you are doing is wrong and you are paying to keep it hidden… Get a clue. It’s wrong!

Treat people like you would expect to be treated, and use your own inherent sense of common decency. Too many “good” people think that they should be able to get away with anything, then simply pray for forgiveness. There is no forgiveness for cheating other people. It was wrong, it is wrong, and always will be wrong.

When your heart and mind tells you that you are a low life, no good, undependable cheater, you are right. When you lead your life according to what you basically know is right, you will be right. Its called “character”.

Of course, a particular religion does not always believe it is a religion. Some Christians will tell you, “it isn’t about being a Christian, it’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Forget the religion.”

Instead of cheating on his dumbass, nothing in common with, Swede bikini model trophy wife, Tiger should have done something forgivable like run a pitbull fighting ring, rape a young girl in his hotel room, kill his best friend drunk driving, or some other type of forgivable pro-athlete behavior.

Having sex with those botox-injected, fake hair wearing, booty implant white girls is simply unforgivable. He needs Jesus… or a good lawyer named Jesus.

Ernie, did it ever occur to you that what you say is right out of religion’s book?

No, what he wrote came directly out of his book. Are you going to argue that religiosity was the path toward treating others as you would have them treat you, because if so, I am an authority on the subject and I’d gladly take the opportunity to disabuse you of your silly notion.

I’m not particularly religious, but I do believe religiosity can make someone a better person in terms of treating others well. If you believe there is a moral purpose to the world, you’re very likely to want to be a part of it. Obviously religiosity in extreme forms can take you down the wrong path. Ex-Marxist Leninists understand that profoundly.

By the way, morality isn’t exclusive to religion. Many of our fundamental moral codes were derived from Hammurabi’s code. I (http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/hammurabi.htm) Intellect also produces moral nature because following a society’s moral standards makes good sense if you want to survive very long. Just ask Anne Boleyn.

Anne Boleyn? That’s a strange example for the risks of violating societal moral standards. Queen Anne gave us Queen Elizabeth and just what would the history of the world and Shakespeare have done without her?

Anne paid with her life over trumped up charges of treason by Henry VIII after he tired of her and could not produce for him a male heir. They didn’t know much about chromosomes back then. She was later proclaimed a martyr of the Anglican Church by her daughter, Elizabeth. In your face, Pops! Not all that bad considering when you’re dead you’re dead.

Now if you had used Henry as your example, the Tiger Woods of his era?, the whore monger died a syphilitic and the eternal face of gluttony and debauchery. He also highjacked an entire religious order and belief system to accommodate his concupiscence of which Anne was just a passing urge. Ireland hasn’t been the same since.

*This should also serve as a prime example of how the WP reply feature is supposed to work for the illiterate’.

Me thinks you do the time period unjust Sir Milt. To paint Anne as a ride along subject of Henry is a wee bit of irony. Anne was a power broker using aggressive political strategies during a time when it was unacceptable for a woman to do so, or, even to think so. To view Anne from the morality of today is to do a disservice to history. In Anne’s day she violated traditional moral codes by instigating the dismissal and divorce of her predecessor. While she may have been forced to spread willingly for the King, this is true, it still took two to tango. Besides in personal first person writings from the era Anne was immensely disliked.

I quite agree with most of what you say and I understand the easy joke that you were going for initially, however, in view of all that has happened historically as a result of Anne and Henry spurring forward the dawn of the English Reformation, for their own moral depravity to be sure, her answer to your hypothetical question might not be what you suppose it would be. Without her and Henry’s role taken together with the role their heir played and her contributions to the advancement of the arts, exploration and, especially, the American colonial experiment, where would our present American Evangelical political movement be- among a myriad of other things?

Whether Anne was hated by most in her time is immaterial. Many historical game changers are/were. The answer to the question you proposed for Anne to answer today is fairly easy, given her involved personality. Her place in the major upheaval of human history and religious diversity is secure, whether for the good or the bad. Her ascendancy in contemporary drama and song, a la the BBC, Hollywood and the Kingston Trio, has given her everlasting immortality most mortals never achieve. Why, just think of how many actresses’ careers alone have been made because of her accomplishments.
Would she now elect to shrink from the course she took, merely for the sake of keeping her head for another 15-25 years perhaps and dying in obscurity? I thinkest Anne’s answer would most definitely be in the negative, M’Lady Jane. Let the heads fall where they may.

Say, you wouldn’t happen to be the incarnation of Lady Jane Grey who also lost a head but otherwise left no corresponding historical imprint? It all fits.

You know, the funny thing is Buddhism really isn’t a religion in the Western sense. Here are some excerpts from Huston Smith’s classic, The Religions of Man:

“Each of these six [characteristics of religion] — authority, ritual, speculation, tradition, God’s sovereignty and grace, and mystery — has an important function to perform in the religions of man. Yet each can easily get out of hand. They had — all of them — in the Hinduism Buddha faced… Religion had become a technique for cajoling or coercing innumerable cosmic bellhops to do what you wanted them to. [sound familiar?]

“Onto this religion scene, bleak, corrupt, defeatist, and irrelevant, matted with superstition and burdened with worn-out rituals, Buddha came … what we find emerging through the work of this unmistakable genius is a religion almost entirely dissociated from each of he six corollaries of religion without which one would normally suppose it could not survive…devoid of authority…devoid of ritual… devoid of speculation, tradition … the supernatural… a religion of intense self effort.”

Of course, many Christians are so ignorant of the basics of Buddhism (or of any other religion for that matter, including Christianity), that they can’t believe this religion has no God on offer.

Although a History of Religions professor of mine in college told me that western Buddhists have “a very romantic and idealized view of the religion filtered through a facade of esoteric language designed for educated westerners when the real thing in its cultural context is every bit as rote, provincial, and mundane Catechism and Sunday School here.”

I suspect a large majority of the practitioners of every religion would cause their religions’ founders to turn over in their graves, if that’s still where they are. But, if anything, Western Buddhists are probably more into the “real” Buddhism than Eastern Buddhists, because most Western Buddhists chose Buddhism, rather than accepting it as the default, assigned when they popped out of the womb.

The few long-time zen buddhists that I know are not interested in the esoteric language — they are interested in self-awareness.

The best thing about Buddhism is there’s no Sky God to blame for the mess we’re in. The second best thing about Buddhism is that, to the best of my knowledge, there’s never been a Buddhist televangelist. The third best thing is that the closest (some) Buddhists come to a “pope” is a guy who giggles a lot, and who seems like someone it might be cool to hang out with for an hour.

I’m sure there are a lot of Buddhist temples in Asia where the priests are just as fucked up as Pat Robertson and that “ah haaaave siiiiiinnnnnnned” guy. But that’s in Asia, where they apparently practice the “real” Buddhism, so I guess we don’t have to worry about it here.

Mitch, while I’m not aware of any Buddhist televangelists, they do have their own version of Scientology. I actually had a run-in with a particular group some years back. I’ve got some time this morning, so I’m going to put together a new post and thread about it.

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